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A painter of pop-art realism combined with a great respect for traditional methods and subject matter, Wayne Thiebaud is one of the most prominent of the Bay Area painters in California in the latter part of the 20th century. His reputation spread far beyond his own state. In his painting, he focuses on the commonplace in a way that suggests irony and objective distance from his subjects. He also makes a point of keeping an independent distance from the New York art scene. He was born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1920, and for one summer during his high school years he apprenticed at the Walt Disney Studio and then studied at an Los Angeles trade school the next summer. He earned a degree from Sacramento State College in 1941. From 1938 to 1949, he worked as a cartoonist and designer in California and New York and served as an artist in the United States Army. In 1950, at the age of thirty, he enrolled in Sacramento State where he earned a Master's Degree in 1952 and began teaching at Sacramento City College. In 1960, he became assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, where he remained through the 1970s and influenced numerous artist students. However, he did not have much following among Conceptualists because of his adherence to basically traditional disciplines, emphasis on hard work rather than creativity, and love of realism. On a leave of absence, he spent time in New York City where he became friends with Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline and was much influenced by these abstractionists as well as Pop Artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. During this time, he began a series of very small paintings based on images of food displayed in windows, and he focused on their basic shapes. Returning to California, he pursued this subject matter and style, isolating triangles, circles, squares, etc. He also co-founded the Artists Cooperative gallery, now Artists Contemporary Gallery, and other cooperatives including Pond Farm, having been exposed to the concept of cooperatives in New York. In 1960, he had his first one-man shows in San Francisco at the Museum of Art and New York at the Staempfli and Tanager galleries. These shows received little notice, but two years later, a 1962 New York Sidney Janis Gallery exhibition officially launching Pop Art, brought him national recognition although he disclaimed being anything other than a painter of illusionistic form. In 1963, he turned increasingly to figure painting, wooden and rigid with each detail sharply emphasized; in 1967 his work was shown at the Biennale Internationale, and in 1985, he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
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Selden Connor Gile was an important member of the early northern California school of art, he was a founding member of the artist group that called themselves the Society of Six. He was born in Stow, Maine on March 20, 1877, and after attending business college in Maine, Gile moved to California in 1901. He was a payroll master in Lincoln and in Oakland after 1905 for Gladding McBean Company. His art studies were under Perham Nahl, Frank Van Sloun, Spencer Macky, William H. Clapp, and at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Prior to 1914, he painted in the manner of classical California landscape painters such as William Keith. After that time he assumed the palette and style of Impressionism-Fauvism, but remained an "individualist" in his mode of expressing the California scene. During the 1920s, he became the dominant figure in a group of painters known as the Society of Six. The Six were active in the San Francisco Bay area and exhibited regularly at the Oakland Art Gallery. In 1927 Gile moved across the Golden Gate to Tiburon and, shortly thereafter, to a houseboat in Belvedere. He died in San Rafael, California on June 8, 1947.
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Bell was born in Seattle, WA in 1906, and he later moved to Staten Island, NY. It was in New York City where he found the inspiration for his work, the city and its people, focusing on daily life subjects. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League with John Sloan. Exhibition venues include the Corcoran Gallery, Museum of Modern Art and the Tacoma Art Museum.
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BiographyMaurice Braun (1877-1941). Painter. Maurice Braun was born in Nagy Bittse, Hungary on Oct. 1, 1877. Braun immigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1881 and settled in NYC. He began drawing at age three and in his early teens was apprenticed to a jeweler. In 1897 Maurice Braun began a five year study period at the NAD followed by one year with Wm M. Chase. He was an established portrait and figure painter in New York before moving to San Diego in 1910. After opening a studio on Point Loma, Maurice Braun founded the San Diego Academy of Art in 1912 and served as its director for many years. Braun remained in San Diego except for the years 1922-24 when he maintained a studio in Silvermine, CT. His Impressionist paintings of the Southwest desert, southern California hills, and High Sierra brought him great national acclaim. At the end of his career he specialized in still lifes of flowers and oriental objets d'art. An ardent follower of Theosophy, their teachings of the unity of nature and man is evident in his work. Maurice Braun died in San Diego on Nov. 7, 1941. Source: Edan Hughes:
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Harriet Whitney Frishmuth was born on September 17, 1880 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A student of such renowned artists as Auguste Rodin and Gutzon Borglum, Frishmuth's reputation and career grew steadily throughout the first several decades of the twentieth century, with exhibitions at the National Academy of Design, the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Salon in Paris, the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939-1940) and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. Her favorite models were dancers, especially Desha Delteil - immortalized in Frishmuth's most famous work, The Vine - a model particularly popular with artists for her ability to hold difficult poses for long periods of time. The final exhibits of Frishmuth's work took place in New York City in 1929, but she remained active in the art world for many years following. Frishmuth passed away in 1980 at the age of 99. A proponent of the Beaux Arts style - Frishmuth was exceptionally critical of modern art, often calling it "spiritless" - her works can now be seen in some of the world's leading museums and collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Dallas Museum of Art, and Ohio University's Kennedy Museum of Art.
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Landscape painter. Born in Norway on June 1, 1856. Jonnevold came to the U.S. in the 1880s and is known to have painted in the Northwest before moving to California in 1887. Settling in San Francisco, he maintained a studio at 1617 California Street. He was a self-taught painter except for brief study in the galleries of Paris in 1908. While in France, he was influenced by the Barbizon painters and their dark palette. Returning to California, he continued to paint the beauty of northern California in the Barbizon style. Often working in late afternoon when shadow prevails, he produced hundreds of attractive tree and meadow scenes which he exhibited in local galleries. By the time of the stock market crash in 1929, Jonnevold was poverty stricken and living alone at his small studio at 560 Kearny Street. In that year he was sentenced to two months in jail for aiming a gun at his landlord. Jonnevold disappeared from San Francisco about 1930. A letter at the Oakland Museum gives his date of death as June 9, 1955 but no location. His works have gained renewed respect in recent years and are highly sought after by collectors. Exhibitions: Calif. State Fair, 1899-1902 (awards); Mechanics' Inst. (SF), 1897; SFAA, 1908-12; Alaska-Yukon Expo (Seattle), 1909 (bronze medal); Kanst Gallery (LA), 1915. In: Oakland Museum; CHS; De Young Museum. Source: Edan Hughes,
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Lacaze was a painter who was heavily influenced by Cubism and Post-Cubism, particularly by fellow Bordeaux painters such as André L’Hote. He was born in Angoulême, Charente and studied at the Lycée Montaigne in Bordeaux and it was there, under an inspirational art master, that his desire to be an artist was initiated. He enrolled at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux and studied under André Edouard Marty. At first, his style was decidedly Cubist, showing the influence of Picasso through the aforementioned L’Hote. However he softened the linear effect somewhat as his career developed and this is particularly apparent in his paintings of nudes. He staged his first solo exhibition in Paris in Rue Visconti quite soon after leaving art school. He also exhibited through his career at other locations in Paris, his home city of Bordeaux, Sainte Maxine, Angoulême and Périgueux but he seems not to have had a particularly commercial attitude to his work apparently sometimes not even turning up to the opening nights. Lacaze was appointed Professor of Fine Art at Collège de Puyguillen and also joined the artistic group Maison des Artistes. Exhibitions: Paris, Galerie Visconiti; Périgueux, N.T.P.; Angoulême, Galerie Tison d’Argence; Bordeaux, Galerie du Loup; Sainte Maxine, Galerie L’Oleil Fauve. The Musée des Beaux Arts de Bordeaux also exhibited his work.
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Born in Braunschweig, Germany on Aug. 16, 1839. Schafer may have studied art in Düsseldorf since his paintings resemble those of other Düsseldorf-trained artists; however, he is believed to have been self-taught. He came to the U.S. in 1876 and arrived in San Francisco in 1880. After establishing a studio, he began exhibiting regularly with the local art association and the Mechanics' Institute Fairs. A peripatetic painter, he made regular sketching trips throughout the Northwest including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. During his last years he painted theatrical scenery in San Francisco and Oakland theaters. Schafer had a home in Oakland from 1880 until his death on July 18, 1927. His landscapes, which often include Indians, were mostly done before 1890 and number about 500. Due to alcoholism, his works are often uneven in quality. Exh: Mechanics' Inst. (SF), 1879-84; Calif. State Fair, 1880, 1894. In: Oakland Museum; Seattle Museum; Monterey Peninsula Museum; Shasta State Historical Monument; Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley); CHS; Crocker Museum; Hoover Inst. (Palo Alto); Museum of Church History & Art (Salt Lake City); Society of Calif. Pioneers; Sonoma Co. Museum (Santa Rosa); Yosemite Museum; Alameda Public Library; Craigdarroch Castle (Victoria, B.C.) Source: Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
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N. (Newell) C. (Convers) Wyeth (October 22, 1882-October 19, 1945), is one of the most celebrated illustrators in the history of art. He grew up on a farm in New England, and studied at the Massachusetts Normal Arts School where he attended classes taught by illustrators Eric Pape and Charles W. Reed. During 1902-04 he studied with the great illustrator Howard Pyle in Wilmington, Delaware. Wyeth accepted a commission from Scribner's and the Saturday Evening Post to paint western scenes, and traveled in the west to gain first hand knowledge of subjects. He worked as a ranch hand in Colorado and rode mail routes in New Mexico and Arizona. In 1906, Wyeth and Carolyn Brenneman Bockius were married in the Wilmington Unitarian church, and they made their home in nearby Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The focus of his painting soon shifted to the land and people of the region in which he lived. In 1911, Wyeth won a commission from Charles Scribner's Sons to illustrate a new edition of R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, a work that made him famous. He provided illustrations for dozens of other classic books, including Kidnapped (1913), The Black Arrow (1916), The Legends of Robin Hood (1917), The Last of the Mohicans (1919), and The Yearling (1939).